About Rules, Rule Sets, and Expressions

A rule specifies conditions to be evaluated and actions to be taken if those conditions are satisfied. Rules are grouped together into rule sets. Rule sets are logical collections of rules that are grouped together because of interactions or dependencies between the rules or because they are processed together when they are published.

Most rules correspond to this form:

For example, suppose you have the following rule:

In this case, customer_debt is a condition term, and customer_debt > customer_assets is a condition expression. The term app_status is an action term, and app_status = "Decline" is an action expression. To enter this rule into the decision table, you first need to add the terms customer_debt and app_status to the decision table, and then enter the expressions under the terms to which the expressions apply.

A single rule can have multiple terms, conditions, and actions. Multiple condition expressions within the same rule are joined together with the AND operand. For example, suppose you define the following rule in SAS Decision Manager:

SAS Decision Manager generates the following rule condition:

(HomeOwner = True) AND (Credit_Score > 700)

Action expressions are always assignment statements.